When it was announced in March that the G-8 summit would not take place in Chicago as scheduled, but instead Camp David, Occupy Wall Street activists declared victory. After all, it was Occupy that had been making waves all fall, threatening to tarnish some of the glossiest public facades of the most powerful companies and figures in the world, and it is Occupy that is working to organize thousands of protesters expected to flood Chicago next month in anticipation of NATO and (at the time) G-8.

Suddenly, there was Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for President Obama’s National Security Council, admitting that the G-8 was high-tailing it from Chicago, Obama’s hometown, because of “political, economic and security issues.”

But real victory for activists was far from secure. The NATO and International Security Assistance Force meetings are still scheduled for the third week of May, and Occupy Chicago, along with other protest groups, are prepared to demonstrate despite Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s police state-esque transformation of the Chicago Police Department.

Even though the G-8 will now be held in a friendly-sounding bunker, the world should still watch Chicago this May, if only to bear witness to the clash between forces bearing wildly different styles of armor. Protesters will be armed with, well, nothing. Signs, maybe some banners. These activists will face a police force on steroids and a mayor wielding unprecedented levels of power, who essentially has full carte blanche to crush protest actions under the guise of maintaining security. […]

Many people are going to oppose NATO Summit in Chicago May 19, 2012. We made series of TV shows that will explain why folks are protesting the NATO. Occupy Chicago and Other will attend the march that will leave Daley Center 12:00 PM noon that day.This show is hosted by Andy Thayer and Produced by Patrick McDonough of Chicago Clout.

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” — William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy

“You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.” — CIA operative, discussing the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. Katherine the Great, by Deborah Davis

“There is quite an incredible spread of relationships. You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level.” — William B. Bader, former CIA intelligence officer, briefing members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein

“The Agency’s relationship with [The New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [It was] general Times policy … to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.” — The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein.

Tearing down sovereign nations and replacing them with global system administrators

By Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer Report

Part 1: Imperialism is Alive and Well

The British Empire didn’t just have a fleet that projected its hegemonic will across the planet, it possessed financial networks to consolidate global economic power, and system administrators to ensure the endless efficient flow of resources from distant lands back to London and into the pockets of England’s monied elite. It was a well oiled machine, refined by centuries of experience.

While every schoolchild learns about the British Empire, it seems a common modern-day political malady for adults to believe that reality is organized as their history books were in school – in neat well defined chapters. This leads to the common misconception that the age of imperialism is somehow a closed-chapter in human history. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Imperialism did not go extinct. It simply evolved. […]

12.36pm: Compass, the left-wing pressure group, argues that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have the right policies to end the economic crisis.

Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, said Ed Miliband and Ed Balls should be bolder:

Labour’s ’5 point plan’ doesn’t go far enough. Ed Miliband and Ed Balls need to go on the offensive by presenting a clear alternative to the failed politics of austerity, rather than offering up a lightweight version of the “Osbornomics” which has let the country down so badly these last two years.

• Reversing the cuts until the economy is growing strongly.
• A new round of Quantitative Easing to be directed to a Green New Deal, to insulate and prepare large numbers of buildings to use renewable energy.
• Cancelling PFI debts, saving the nation £200bn in debt repayments.
• Increasing some benefits for the poorest, who are most likely to spend any extra income, thus boosting demand.
• Introducing a Financial Transaction tax on the City to be used for public investment purposes.
• Closing the £70 billion lost tax gap with a range of anti-avoidance measures including a general anti-avoidance principle. […]

Issuing debt and printing money do not create wealth. All they can create is a temporary illusion of wealth.

I could have written “if all the money vanishes,” but that would be misleading, for all unbacked money will most certainly vanish into thin air. The only question is when, not if. Frequent contributor Harun I. explains why:

Those who fail to understand that the Status Quo is impossible to maintain will be shocked when the disintegration is undeniable. But the whole thing was perverse to begin with. Words like capitalism and meritocracy are thrown around to make people feel good when, in reality, we have never owned anything, not even ourselves.

How can we own ourselves when the very thing we use for subsistence can be cheapened or reduced to nearly nothing, not by market forces, but by central banks acting at the behest of governments? When a person does not control his labor, what is he?

I have been studying the monetary history of the world for the past few weeks. I can tell you that the second oldest profession is currency debasement. Nothing is new. […]